Roundabout
Girl Guidance
By KATHARINE WHITEHORN
The evening I went was the dress rehearsal and the audience consisted of about five million assorted Brownies, Guides, Scouts and Rangers, and me. Sitting elbow-deep in Brownies, I bor- rowed (with surprising difficulty) a pencil, and we all cheered loudly as the curtains parted.
The scene showed a number of listlessly writh- ing Beatniks, one of whom,- Liz was quickly isolated for further study. Not exactly a Beatnik as California knows them, Liz wore a tight skirt and beads as a symbol of hopelessness and folly.
The Brownies bubbled up and down in their seats as the pageant unfolded; they .crowed with joy as the voice of the producer boomed 'Go ofl, Vision' or sternly instructed Florence Nightin- gale to raise her lamp higher—or rather the white enamel jug she was holding instead.
By the time we reached the interval, the first Guide group had been founded (from inmates of a home for Difficult Girls—no one seemed sure what the Difficulty had been) and the impression- able Beatnik was half-way to conversion.
While brown and blue surged at the refresh- merit table and from the centre of the scrum came those forlorn cries for order associated with massed children anywhere, I made my way backstage. Here, as at any proper dress rehearsal, there was restrained chaos. Visions tripped over the skirts of Virtues; a small tubby Scout squirmed under the lipstick in the make-up room; there was a sprinkling of leggy Scouts (1 don't care That Baden-Powell wore in the back- woods. shorts for sixteen-year-olds in London are ludicrous); and from time to time the corridors would jam olid with little Girl Guides looking wicked in their stage make-up.
Among them, tough and sensible, was one of those sound weather-beaten women with a voice' like a knife sharpener. One of the Guides' problems, she said, is that as girls get older younger, if you see what I mean, they drop out; even the career-minded ones, who are working too hard to become totally obsessed by boys, often have no time for Guiding either. A busty Ranger was indignant 'I think it's awful, when they say you're too old for Rangers at seven- teen and a half.' She had gone on one Ranger hike and the others had talked only about their approaching weddings The older Guider, how- ever, did not think it mattered in the slightest. She told me among other things that Guides cannot go for overnight hikes on their own any more—there are too many attackers about. It is ironical that when the thing was started, girls were chaperoned, and boys, too. were more re- stricted: it really was adventurous to go camping. Now, when the teenagers go off camping and hostelling and hitch-hiking on their own all over the place, a supervised camp seems no great thrill.
When I got back to the second act, there was a scene of jolly jiving betwixt Rovers and Rangers (`Come on, be lively! You're not being Beatniks now!') and the lost Beatnik was in the bag. Towards the end of the evening the producer's Weary voice could be heard louder and oftener, the voices cf the performers fainter and less. Guides stirred restlessly; Brownies were taken home to bed. At last the curtain came down, and we left, hoping against hope that they would Be Prepared by the first performance.
It seemed to me that Liz's incomprehensible Beatnik remarks had been but the first hoarse cries of the mating season, fOr which Guiding is no real cure; but this was not the moral to be drawn. The point of the pageant was that Liz was aimless and r. iserable. whereas Girl Guides know where they are going.
With all due respect. it seems rather too much of a claim. Guiding is amusing and provides a tolerable outlet for the idealistic lump in the teenage throat (it) finds release at a public school in alternate singing of 'I Vow to Thee. MY Country' and the school song). But it has 110 religious or political end; it has no goal.
And it is lucky it doesn't. One look at more purposeful movements—Nazi Youth, or Young Communists or M RA—is enough to make one instantly thankful for all the badges, the bird- watching, the kindly moustaches of the old Brown Owls. I almost got a lump in my throat myself, thinking of my own Brown Owl, who had the finest moustaches I have ever seen on a woman, and taught me to make my first—and last—rice pudding.
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